Sanibel chef competes on Food Network show featuring Bobby Flay
ENVIRONMENT

Rooney gathers governor, officials behind closed doors to build 'a fighting force' to tackle harmful algal blooms

Chad Gillis and Amy Bennett Williams

Gov. Ron DeSantis was the surprise guest of honor at a multi-agency discussion of harmful algal blooms Tuesday.

Convened by Rep. Francis Rooney, the intent of the roundtable was to connect high-level policymakers and scientists with the boots-on-the-ground leaders who dealt with last year's toxic algae crises on a daily basis.

The goal, said Rooney, R-Naples, was to help them become a "fighting force" with enough information to "go out and communicate what they know. They’re the point people. They’re the elected people right here who are going to be facing green slime – or in the case of Captiva, brown slime – and dead grass and fish kills," he said at the post-event press conference. The meeting gave them “more confidence, more science and more contacts to call."

Elected officials must tread a fine line when communicating about the blooms, DeSantis said. “If you’re a mayor or something," he said, "and you’re walking down the street and people are coming up to you asking, ‘Hey is this stuff bad?’ you don’t want to not have any answers. You don’t want to tell them, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ if it ends up being bad. You also don’t want to scare people and say ‘It’s the worst thing ever’ if that’s not what the science says,” he said, over the shouts of picketers gathered in a parking lot near FGCU’s Emergent Technologies Institute along Alico Road, the meeting's site. “A lot of people are apprehensive, and I totally understand that.”

More:Public, media excluded from upcoming Rooney roundtable on toxic algae blooms at FGCU

For those who came to protest, the meeting’s closed-door format fanned that apprehension. But Rooney explained that agency scientists weren’t comfortable speaking in front of the public and the press.

“Nobody wants to keep the media and the people away from the facts,” Rooney said. “This is a unique circumstance with a bunch of people who are not politicians, they’re administrators. They weren’t comfortable that the interchange of information would be as robust if the press were here," so sacrificing public access was the only way to make the meeting happen.

“I don’t think you’ll find anybody that’s spent more of a career defending the First Amendment,” Rooney said “The fact of the matter is, if we wanted the scientists, the technical people, we couldn’t have the press. So I made a decision, and I’m more than glad to defend it.”

Nonsense, said Sanibel resident Wes Roberts, who held a sign that said “Transparency equals democracy."

More:Governor DeSantis will attend Rooney's roundtable on harmful algal blooms at FGCU

As for what was discussed, Rooney wouldn’t give specifics. “You know the meeting was off the record, but they talked a great deal about the technical issues of how (blooms) happen, where they’re happening, the potential health risks that have occurred from them and I don’t think it would be right for me to betray the confidence of either our local health officials or the CDC people about what they talked about. But at least now, our people know a lot more and the CDC people know our people and they can communicate more effectively.”

He pointed out he’s organized a Friday meeting with nonprofits and community groups at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples  “that will be open to everybody and you can ask any question you want.”

Rooney said one goal was to find ways to better inform the public about the dangers of harmful algal blooms.

“If you’re going to get your kayak and you pull up to a boat ramp and there’s green slime there, we would like that person to realize don’t put your kayak in that water,” Rooney said over chants from the group of a dozen or so protesters. “It sounds simple but we had people that did that last summer and we could probably help them find some other place to go.”

More:Rooney to CDC: Tell us what you know about how toxic algae blooms affect health

Rooney wouldn’t go into details about who said what, but did explain that experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared “feelings and judgments” with local mayors and scientists.

Earlier guest lists hadn't listed the Florida Department of Health. When questioned at the conference, Rooney said someone represented it, but staff didn't return a request for the official's name.

“This is a new phenomenon, and they’re working very hard to get their arms around it and to work with people like Lee Health to figure out what we can do about it,” Rooney said. “Our goal was to bring different sources of expertise together so they could build relationships.”

U.S. Rep. Francis Rooney enters a closed door water quality meeting at FGCU's Emergent Technologies Institute on Tuesday May, 7, 2019. He met with elected officials and other stakeholders.

For his part, DeSantis said he didn’t have any problem with the media attending the meeting. His goal, he said, is to get better information to the public quicker.

“At the state level we want our Department of Health to lean in on this and we want them to be honest with the public,” DeSantis said. “I don’t think we can sit here and say ‘it’s great for everybody’ because it’s not.”

Jennifer Hecker, director of the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program, called the meeting productive. “I think there was a frank and intimate conversation,” said Hecker, who was inside. “I do believe public input is important, but their leaders are reflecting their community and their constituents.”

Protester Erik Larson, who will be a senior at FGCU this fall, said he thought the meeting should be open to the public.

“I think it’s unfair to be left out,” Larson said. “I think it goes even further than that. Over the summer I came to this building 9 to 5 and now that this guy’s here I can’t go to school. This is someone the public elected and we can’t even go to the meeting.”

David Dettinburn said anything government discusses that regards public health should be open to the public to some degree.

“The people and the public are the ones that brought these issues to light, and now we’re not being included in the solution,” Dettinburn said. “And that’s frustrating.”

More:Editorial: Congressman Rooney should let public in on toxic algae discussion at FGCU